Silent Hill 2: Letter From Silent Heaven :CV:
by Ryan M. Usher
Summary: The comprehensive re-write of the original "Letter From Silent Heaven". A novelization of "Silent Hill 2", as seen through the eyes of James Sunderland, the game's protagonist.
1. Chapter 1: I Got a Letter

_**Letter From Silent Heaven**_**  
****The Comprehensive Rewrite**

**BY RYAN M. USHER**

**PART ONE – PREFATORY MATTERS**

Chapter 01: I Got a Letter

I'm not sure if every human being experiences one of those moments. Do you know what I'm talking about? One of those watershed slices of your own earthly allotment in which your whole life doesn't just change, it gets entirely upended, ripped apart to its elements and reassembled into something entirely unrecognizable?

I did.

My wife died young. Mary spent twenty-two years living and three years dying. There were so many doctors in so many hospitals, each one of them without a clue as to how they might stop that which consumed her from the inside. I never learned the truth of it myself, but I long ago gave up trying. Past a certain point, does it really matter? All that mattered was that there were three years of love, happiness and normalcy on one side, three years of pain, terror and decay on the other, rather neatly divided by the day that one doctor took me into his office and, with a straight face, told me that both my wife and my marriage had an expiration date. His prediction wasn't exact, and the optimistic guess turned out to be closer to correct. Unable to stop her body from destroying itself, they had managed at least to slow its progress. I'm not sure how much of a mercy it really was, though. She was young. We both were. Yet, at the end, I felt like I'd carried myself for a hundred years, and she died as if all the aspects of someone most ancient and vulnerable had been forced onto a woman who should have been enjoying her prime. Death should have been decades in the future for the two of us. I never had the answers, and, as I think I said, the answers would have meant nothing to have. All I did have was the ruins of dreams, the mocking ghosts of hope, and however many more years I had left, I would have to walk them without Mary by my side.

If you think this is the event to which I first referred, I forgive you for the mistake.

I remembered sitting on the edge of our bed—well, by this point, it was _my _bed. The evening had long since pushed the sun off to western places, but by now, it was late spring, and it was still comfortable even with the window open. I could hear the sounds of cars passing by in soft sighs, the chatter of two or three neighborhood dogs, the plaintive chitter of spring insects, but those things existed only on my periphery. For me, there was nothing except the gun in my hand. My uncle Stephen had given me this Colt revolver as a wedding gift. Uncle Steve was a gun nut, and though I never reached quite that level of enthusiasm, I think there's something of an imperative among young American males to at least be mildly interested by weaponry. Mary hadn't been very thrilled, quipping that a blender would have probably been more useful than a chromed death instrument. As it turned out, she was right. I stored it in a shoe box a week after the wedding, and the only time it left the top shelf of the closet is when we moved from the apartment to the house a year later, staying out only long enough to find a new home in a new closet. I hadn't so much as thought about it since then.

On this night, however, I kept hearing it call to me. I don't think I was so far gone that I actually heard this manifested as a voice, but rather as an awareness that it was there, as a strange urge to pull it down and let it out for a little fresh air. A _welcome_ urge. I gave in.

And, now I sat with it on the edge of the bed. I had one of the bed pillows in my lap. The Colt sat upon it, silver and gleaming. I hadn't cleaned it at all in the five years since I'd last held it, but the finish hadn't dulled a bit except where my fingerprints smudged the chrome. I imagine I would have looked like quite the madman, turning the thing over and over in my hands, as if looking for something on its surface, something that may have been important. Perhaps, I looked like a man who had suicide on the mind. I didn't seem to, but I can't really claim to have had complete access to my own thoughts right then. I had been drinking, of course. There had been quite a lot of that in those days, and much of it intended to blunt the trauma I seemed to feel whenever I was capable of concentrated thinking. So, I think I wasn't thinking suicide. Yet, there was something fascinating about this deadly piece of metal in my hand. I had never once fired it, neither in anger nor in recreation. For some reason, that felt like a shame. Why hadn't I? Why keep such a thing around, but for putting it to use every now and then? It was too nice, too valuable to simply throw or give away, as I would any other item that served me no purpose. Besides, it _could_ serve a purpose. That was really up to me, wasn't it?

A kiss of ice pressed against my lips, a kiss of cold, unyielding iron. This did not register as out of the ordinary. I felt, rather than heard, the barrel click against my teeth as my lips parted, but this was not so that I could return the kiss. Teeth followed lips, wider and wider and slowly, like waiting for a garage door to open after pressing the button. I could taste the iron, now. A tang of sorts, not at all unlike blood, or the inside of your cheek after it is accidentally caught between chewing teeth. Strange taste. Not even really unpleasant. I didn't think it was loaded. If that had ever happened, I didn't remember doing it. Was that why I felt my thumb rest against the trigger? Was it the confidence in knowing that I could pull forward and all I'd get was a harmless, dry _click_? Surely, there would be no decapitating blast of fire and lead, there couldn't be, because I would never do anything like that to myself.

Things weren't good. Things were, to put it more bluntly, just over the border from outright disaster. I drank to still the demons, sure. I had plenty of demons. It did not begin with that doctor's statement of fate, but I guess it would have if I'd been able to comprehend the totality of what he told me. If I'd been able to accept it. The drink crept up on me slowly, something like a cheetah stalking antelope in high grass, and so seductive. It had its teeth around me before I noticed anything had happened, and by that point, what did I care that anything _had _happened? I did still have my job, and the work did sometimes serve as a distraction from the slowly-dissolving glue of my personal life, but that distraction couldn't do its job when the alarm clock would go off and I'd simply kill it and go back to sleep, the thought of dragging my tired ass out of bed and into the shower seemingly miles beyond workable. My co-workers put forth faces of understanding and compassion, but when I wasn't around, there was talk, quiet talk. I never heard a word of it, but I didn't have to. I knew it was going on. Their eyes told me what my ears could not, even as they spoke their words of understanding and compassion. It was really no different with friends and family. At first, everyone was there. The family network on both sides was always in attendance in some capacity, though most of this came from the Shepherd side. The Shepherd side outnumbered mine. I had my father, for the most part, and a number of friends that dwindled as time went on, like water leaking from a cracked bowl. It got to the point where I didn't even care, a point at which the bottle was all the friend, family and confidant I could rely upon. Yes, the world as I knew it had gone progressively to shit as I stood by and watched. I sat on a soft, comfortable bed in a tidy little house in the middle of the ruins of my life, staring and not seeing, feeling the weight of the last three years on my shoulders and the even heavier weight of the .357 half in my hands and half in my mouth, and when I pulled the trigger, it was as involuntary as any of the millions of breaths I've taken in my life, and I thought for sure that I was wrong, that it wasn't unloaded at all and halfway through the unstoppable motion, I knew it would buck like a backfiring engine, and I would eventually be found right where I was, lying face-up on this bed, and of course most of my face would still be there, but the back of my skull would most likely reside several feet behind me in a gruesome flower blossom on the sheets and on the wall. It was a feeling so strong that it almost had to be a premonition, and maybe that's why it almost disappointed me when all I got was the _snap_ of the hammer striking an empty chamber and the _click_ of my teeth against the barrel.

At that moment, every muscle in my body seemed to turn to jelly. The gun slipped from my hands, slid off my lap and fell to the carpet with a soft _thud_. I collapsed backward, both face and skull intact, and grief exploded from every opening and pore of my body. Tears leaked hot trails down the sides of my face, but that was only the prelude. I moaned, a low, awful sound, and that only lead to a near-howl as great, shuddering sobs wracked both body and soul. I choked, gasped, fought for breath. I needed to breathe because I wasn't done yet. Three years of misery and compounded interest, three years of not knowing why or how and only having vague ideas when. Three years of emptiness and loss. Three years of absolutely nothing, and all of it coming to the surface in one deadly tsunami of emotion, and the worst part about it was that this would be no cleansing, no lancing of the wounds. I knew that even when this subsided, all of the responsible shit would await me. Nothing would be solved.

I guess I passed out at some point after that. There was sleep of some kind, a deep, exhausted sleep that bred awful dreams. You know the kind I'm talking about, the kind that lose all definition the moment you wake up, but the sense of them remains, a residue that tells you nothing except that they were awful and that you're probably better off not remembering anything more than that. I woke up with that unpleasant dream vapor sharing my head with a thick, skull-pounding headache. Streamers of morning sunlight seared my cloudy eyes and doing nothing good for my aching head. I had fallen asleep fully-dressed, not even apparently having taken my shoes off, but I still shivered from the early chill coming through the still-open window. I pulled myself upright and closed it. The pillow I'd had in my lap had somehow ended up in the hallway outside the bedroom door, slumped against the wall like something boneless. Had I thrown it? I couldn't remember. I couldn't remember anything after dropping the Colt, and that only after I almost tripped over it walking towards the door. I bent over and retrieved it. Smears marked the barrel, from where it had been in my mouth. I remember my teeth rattle as I pulled the trigger. It hadn't been loaded, else I wouldn't be here holding it. Or, had it? I had never checked to make sure.

Holding it out, the four visible chambers had nothing in them, and that should have closed the case for me. But, there were two I could not see, the one in firing position and the one directly opposite. Might it have been one of those? I told myself that I was being absurd, that I'd never chambered a single round in this thing. I was sure. I could pop the little hinge and see what I knew to be true.

I did not do this. What I did was aim it at the ceiling, cocking the hammer and wondering what would happen. I knew I was right, that there was nothing in the chamber. I knew that, if I was wrong, I would blast a crater into the ceiling, and perhaps all the way through the roof. I would also, very likely, break my wrist, holding it the way I was.

I pulled the trigger. The hammer smacked against the chamber. There was no roar, no boom. It was empty. I had known it all along. Without another thought, I put it back into its newspaper-lined box and returned it to its lonely spot in the closet. I would never kill myself, not ever. There was no point to keeping it around. I could not imagine ever changing my mind. I would not want to see what would happen if my imagination proved to be more fertile than it seemed to be.

I made my bathroom session quick. The shave was all habit, the shower necessary. Last night's events left me feeling dirty and haggard, a skim of some filth beyond the normal sweat and grit of everyday life. I thought, as I stepped into the steaming rush, that I might end up standing there until the hot water gave out. Maybe even after that. It proved to be no baptism, if that was what I'd been hoping for, and ten minutes later, I was toweling off and finding something to wear. It was a Saturday, so no work. Probably not much of anything until the Eagle's Club started serving, which would not be for at least another ten or eleven hours.

I went downstairs to see if I felt like eating. Halfway down, I somehow remembered that I still had a skull-busting headache, and wondered why I would ever even contemplate the consumption of food. Still, I kept the Tylenol in there, so that I could take it without having to venture far for a water glass. Keeping these two items in close proximity had slowly developed into something of a necessity over the last several months.

Having the house to myself meant that I spaced out my cleaning sessions beyond what Mary would have tolerated, but the kitchen was in fairly presentable shape this morning. I got the Tylenol and water and had just sat at the breakfast nook when the whole house seemed to jump right out of its foundation. A terrific _bang _sounded from somewhere out front. For all that, every loose object I could see remained undisturbed. There wasn't even a ripple in my water glass.

I left it, heading toward the front door. I half-expected to see it in splinters, blasted open and hanging off its hinges. It wasn't. Cautiously, I opened the door. Surely, there must be something. It had been so loud, so powerful. I'd never heard a gas tanker explode, but my imagination told me that it couldn't have sounded much different.

The front door was as it always had been. There was a scratch on the paint, but I had done that while carrying my steel toolbox a few years ago. That was it. Nor was there any explosive inferno around that I could see. My pulse was pounding double-time, and that couldn't have happened from something I imagined. Could it?

That's when I saw the envelope, laying face-down on the welcome mat. I picked it up but didn't look at it then, still wondering what had made that terrific noise, and why only my racing heart existed as evidence that the terrific noise had ever occurred. I closed the door and went back to the kitchen, scooping up the little white pills and tossing them in my mouth. Bitter juice flooded my mouth, making me reach for the water glass. I had chewed them without realizing. My hands were shaking.

"Stop it," I told myself, speaking aloud.

The envelope sat on the counter next to the water glass, still face-down. I considered it for the first time. My first thought was that it was just some junk, or maybe the newspaper delivery guy reminding me that my subscription was almost up. The flat side of the envelope was blank except for four letters, written in bold, black script. Seeing them, my heart jumped right back into overdrive, and then, unsatisfied, attempted to climb right up my throat and vacate entirely.

The name on the envelope said **MARY.**

I stared at it for a very long time, seeing but not understanding. Why would Mary be getting mail? But, 'mail' did not really describe it properly. There was no return address in the upper-left corner, no stamp in the other, and no attempt made to cancel the stamp that wasn't there. No postal worker had ever handled it, in other words. So, what then? Did someone leave it here, just walk right up to the porch and drop it? Did they announce their arrival by setting off a few pounds of TNT somewhere up the street?

That was ridiculous. All of it was ridiculous. The envelope, despite it being the only tangible piece of the puzzle, was the most ridiculous of all. I slipped my finger under the flap and pulled it open. Inside was a piece of unadorned stationery folded into quarters.

It was a letter.

I read it. Then, I read it again. And again and again. I think I stopped after six or seven, though even that wasn't enough. I set it down on the counter, staring at the blank backside, trying without any success to make sense of what I'd just read. Failing, I read it again, the handwriting neat but unsteady because of my shaking hand.

It wasn't written to Mary, but _by _Mary. It was to me. My name was nowhere on either the letter or its container, but I knew. When you're married to someone, you always know, don't you? The communication factor becomes subliminal. You make the connections without thinking, and you know when they're right without having to ask. But of course, that wasn't even close to important. The vital aspect was that I just received a letter from my wife. That much was obvious, but that one fact being obvious made all the other facts collide and burst into flame.

Because, my wife was dead.

She had been dead for three years.


	2. Chapter 2: Silent Hill

02: Silent Hill

So, I went to Silent Hill.

I know what you're thinking. And, I don't even really think it's wrong or unfair. The sun rises in the east, the same side of the moon always faces the earth, and dead people can't write letters. I deserve some credit, though. It's not as though I was ignorant of all the rational possibilities at work. In fact, I seem to remember examining each of them, in sequence, as I drove up the interstate, crossing over from Massachusetts into New Hampshire with the noon sun high in the sky but obscured by clouds. I knew Mary's handwriting as well as I knew the features of her face. It was too good to be a forgery. And, even if it were that, even if some skilled miscreant decided to write this letter in a near-perfect imitation of Mary's script, why bother? What would be the point? The gain? Could someone simply be playing the world's most tasteless joke, hoping for a few yuks at my expense? Possible, I thought, but not likely. Such a cause demanded a motive, but I could think of no one who would pull that kind of stunt, nor any reason which might drive them.

So, yeah, here I was, discovering that it sometimes isn't very difficult to think rationally even as you're acting irrationally. The letter said she was in Silent Hill, and even though I understood that this was, well, irrational, I decided I had to find out for myself. Sometimes, despair can do wonders for your breadth of logic, and there's no word that more succinctly summed up my life. I despaired. My life was in a free-fall. My wife was dead, and the last three years eroded my spirit like teeth dropped into an acid bath. I had precious few tethers holding me down, and while this letter was the strong wind gust that broke them, something else probably would have done it sooner or later. Could have been the drinking, certainly. Or, the ever-growing feeling of lethargy and despondence that was coming to rule my life. The Colt pistol sitting in the shoebox could have eventually played a role, too. Either way, all moot. The damage was done. The letter, now in my pocket, existed in defiance of rationality. It was an impossible communication from an impossible person. This I understood. A million years ago, in a normal life, that would have been enough for me. I'd have needed thirty seconds to make that determination and write it off as a bad joke. It would have troubled me no more than would some stupid kid making a crank call. Right now, however, normal life never seemed so far away.

The bright sunlight that had seared me into consciousness this morning was gone by the time I saw the "The Way Life Should Be" sign herald my passing into Maine. That was fine. I'd dulled my headache, but it wasn't dead. I could feel it just behind the ridge of bone, anxious to break free and resume this morning's operations. The sky had grown a thin sheet of cover like tissue paper in a shirt box, growing thicker as I went further north. I seemed to have the road to myself, and that was totally okay. It was a Saturday in May, and the tourist season would just now be ramping up in Vacationland. For Silent Hill, and maybe three hundred other tiny little places in the west of the state, May was the beginning of harvest season. I should be floating in a steady stream of New Yorkers and fellow Massholes all the way to Silent Hill, most of them wanting a chance to wrestle with the salmon and brook trout at the lake. I had wanted to try my hand at the trout myself, but Mary and I only visited once, and we hadn't the time to spare for an all-day fishing excursion—even if Mary hadn't been flatly unwelcoming of the idea.

By now, you're probably wondering why I would decide to suspend disbelief and follow the letter's instructions. I explained most of it a while ago, I think. The easy answer would be that I missed my wife so badly that logic was no obstacle, and that would be some of the answer. Important, but also incomplete. As fucked-up as my life was, I'm not sure that would have sent me on my journey by itself. It wasn't that she said she waited for me as much as _where_ she said she'd be waiting. It was those two magic words in that crazy gibberish that decided everything.

Silent Hill.

As I mentioned, Mary and I spent some time there. She'd heard about the place, either from some friend or maybe one of her brothers. That I can't remember. What I do remember is her showing me the travel brochure, her eyes bright and shining. She had neatly sandbagged me with her proposal, the way a parent does when their kid gets clever near Christmastime and manages to elicit a promise for some expensive toy. It's not that I was against the idea of a week in western Maine, don't get that idea. I would much prefer a sleepy little town's tourism as opposed to the crowds and noise of a place like Bar Harbor or Portsmouth in the summertime, packing the beaches like cans on a supermarket shelf. Silent Hill was just fine, as far as I was concerned. For Mary, 'just fine' didn't even scratch the surface, and this was apparent to me even as she held the brochure in front of my face. And, I have to say, it was a wonderful week we spent there. This was in July, the sun hot and the skies clear, Toluca Lake shimmering like a rippled sapphire outside of our hotel window. I had a great time, no question. We went everywhere together, seeing not just the lakefront attractions but also the interior of the town, the places in which the locals lived and worked even when all the summer folk had gone back south to one of the states they all disliked and mistrusted. Mary treated the whole thing as some kind of religious experience, the look of wonder on her features would not have been out of place on those of a lifelong devout visiting sites in Jerusalem or Rome. I liked the town, but for her, it was something more. Something, perhaps, like awed love.

"You know what I heard?" she asked me on the last day. We had almost everything packed away and ready to go, everything but the camcorder. I didn't want to leave with the last twenty minutes unused on the tape, so I played with it, taking in the last bits of our little paradise and committing them to the memory of the VHS cassette. Mary gazed out the window at the lake, her back to me.

"No. What?" I asked.

"I heard that this whole town used to be a sacred place." She looked at me then, and her arms spread out in an encompassing gesture. After a moment, she turned back to the lake, a gem seeming alive with sparks in the morning sunshine. Her body relaxed, and the sigh I heard was unmistakably that of infatuation. "I think I can see why."

She was on her feet then, facing me once more. Relaxation vanished, replaced by a look of almost heartbreaking need. "James, I want to come back here. I want you to take me here again."

"Sure, okay," I said, trying not to laugh at how serious she was being.

"Promise me."

"I promise."

I did not keep it.

The author of my letter knew about that promise, and my failure to deliver upon it. It sure as hell wasn't a prank, and that was the proof. No one else knew about that, and certainly no one else saw the look on her face when she asked. It was something only Mary could know.

But, Mary was dead, and dead people can't write letters. This, I knew. I trucked nothing with ghosts and spirits. I was, for the most part, a man secure in his rational view of the world. Crazy, stupendous shit happened all the time, but enough careful examination would always reveal some combination of mundane circumstances at work. Yet, the letter denied all of that. The letter repealed such notions entirely. Its very existence was beyond explanation, perhaps a kind of proof in and of itself that everything I knew was wrong. Plus, well, I _wanted_ to believe it. Sometimes things work just because you think they do. That's why we hit the TV when it's on the fritz and knock on wood when we speak of possible disaster. Sometimes it's just like that. I was going to Silent Hill this morning because I got this letter and I wanted it to be true. Because, if Mary Sunderland were a ghost, if she would haunt anyplace in the entire universe, Silent Hill would be that place. I went because I had no other tethers to my old life, and I wanted so desperately to preserve this one that I would go there to save it, if I could.

So, I went.

I spent most of the drive in a kind of daze, paying very little attention to anything. Our ability to drive a car exists almost entirely on some lower level. Even under normal circumstances, we react unconsciously to curves in the road, to traffic lights and traffic patterns, leaving us capable of holding conversations, or, if alone, doing some heavy thinking. Here I was, on the interstate, going north. Eventually, I got off and was following a smaller state road west, but my mind was miles ahead and years behind, thinking about my wife and the time we'd spent in Silent Hill, trying to recall the experience as best I could. Until this morning, Silent Hill hadn't been anywhere near my thoughts for years, and as such, what I got was more of an overall picture of those six days, those six wonderful days right before we went over the cliff together. I was awash in the sensations, wrapped in the emotional residue, trying hard to hold on to each pleasant moment because as soon as it departed, as soon as it met the tainted air of the present, such moments soured and curdled. Few concrete memories came from this, only a handful of actual events manifesting at all, and none of them formed into continuity, but I could still sense the skim of them. Bring back those shades of good times when the good times are gone, and it's like taking a big gulp of icy slime. I thought that, as I got closer, some of these things would become solid, but by the time I'd reached the eastern skirts, all I had left was a series of events, a simple timeline such as that you'd see in a newspaper, with only bits of info someone else considered important.

I didn't have a watch or dashboard clock, but I guessed that it was around two in the afternoon when I saw the Historic State Route sign, the first landmark that I recognized. Just past it, a sign telling me that I was only four miles from Silent Hill, and fourteen from a place called Brahms. Coming upon this first whisper of familiarity hit me like a quirt. I'd been in something like a trance ever since leaving the house this morning, and just like that, it was gone. Was it really two o'clock after all? Getting from Ashfield to the lake had taken us about five hours last time, and I'd left just after eight, but could that much time have really passed? It didn't feel right, and suddenly, it seemed important that I know.

I'd turned off the radio as soon as I left the driveway back in Ashfield. Deep Purple had been there to say hello when I keyed the ignition, and I was in no mood for Deep Purple or anyone else. It all sounded loud and jagged and confusing, an assault on the senses, and so I decided to drive to the sounds of the engine and my own thoughts. Now I clicked the knob. Had I been home, I'd have gotten the rock station out of Boston, but out here in the woods, 100.7 FM sounded like an inner tube suffering from a slow leak. I dialed across the band, and frowned. This far out, you couldn't expect much on FM, but usually, one or two signals from Portland or Augusta would make it this far. The dial needle went back and forth, but returned only white noise. I switched to AM, not expecting much, but still hopeful that there was some low-power talk station sending a feed. This time, I managed to pick up two stations. One of them seemed to be playing a long ad of some kind. A mile passed before I decided it was some kind of radio infomercial and gave it up as a bad deal. The other, tinny and choked with static, gave rise to a soft, plaintive moaning. A harsh counterpoint ran against this. A man, shouting. His words were loud but almost entirely lost to the poor signal. Even still, it wasn't anger in this man's voice. The tone of it rose and fell, like a conductor's baton. I guessed that it was a church service, and a guess it would probably remain. Even if they had a mind to pause for station identification and a time stamp, it wouldn't make it through the garble any more than did the preacher man's.

I snapped the radio off just as Historic Route 26 became Nathan Avenue. I knew from a map I had that Nathan snaked for about two miles along the south shore of Toluca Lake, and the South Vale district of town. At the western tip of the lake, you could choose to go north toward the other side of town, or continue west, where Nathan reverted to HR26 and would eventually lead you into New Hampshire, its White Mountains and its old mill towns. The sentinel forms of spruce and pine stood tall over either side of the road, a road that I'd had to myself ever since passing a place called Pleasant River about ten miles back. The evergreens loomed a mile over my car, seeming to touch the heavens themselves, beyond my ability to see. _Who is this_, they seemed to say. _Who is this man to travel my paths and tread upon my soil?_

The day had closed in around me, advancing toward me from all directions with imperceptible slowness. It was as if I were now driving through a small bubble of reality trapped within something larger, something I could not see. Sweat trickled from my brow, coming to a bead at the end of my nose. Why? What was this?

The heater. I didn't remember even thinking about touching it, but touch it I apparently had, because there it was, filling the car with dry dragon's breath, its ceaseless exhale a dull roar in the quiet. I turned the dial and it died with a sigh. No sound now but the soft hum of the engine. I didn't hear my heart beating, but the ol' girl was going at it with enough that I could almost hear it, pounding through my capillaries. I could almost imagine my ear drums bulging with the pressure.

"Christ!" I said aloud. I placed my right hand on my chest. Beneath a mantle of flesh and bone, my heart hammered. I pressed against that spot, as if trying to calm myself by touch. It must have done some of the trick, because the pause between beats grew noticeably spaced. My pulse still came hard, but at least it didn't resemble an engine being revved by some stupid teenager. And, even though the heater was off, sweat continued to bead on my nose and forehead. Was this some kind of panic attack? I almost thought it was, and with reason; the attendant physical symptoms were there, anyway, but it lacked the most vital element. I _felt_ no panic. My body may have fired the afterburners, but my mind wasn't playing along. I felt… not a lot of anything, really. I've heard it phrased as "running on instruments", and that summed it up pretty well. My body put on a show giving an inside view of a man who's sweating out his first armed robbery attempt, but it was all on the outside. Inside, I was floating.

It was so bad that by the time I'd even noticed the fog, I did so only because I saw the barricade long after I should have. The sawhorses came first, connected by a slack cord of yellow tape. Behind it, an underpass of some kind, cordoned off by boards and chain link fencing. The brakes cried out as I plunged down on the pedal. There was no screech of tires on pavement, but a strained hiss issued forth from beneath my feet, as if the scream were only barely contained. I sunk into the old plush of my seat, and was instantly bounced forward, as if I'd fallen onto it from ten feet above. My chest thudded, the responsible organ knocking around in a frenzy, as if wanting to get out and away, but this wasn't because of my sudden stop. Christ, but I felt dreadful.

I backed the car away from the barricade, watching as the milky mist reached out and tried to swallow it. Had I backed up another hundred feet, it may have succeeded. Instead, I turned into a row of parking spaces. There had been a sign informing me of an upcoming scenic turnout, and that's where I now found myself. I killed the engine and opened the door.

Mere minutes ago, I had been sweating under the fury of my heater, cranked all the way to high. I could not remember turning it on and no reason for doing so had occurred to me. When I stepped out of the car, I got my answer. Somewhere along the line, the temperature had taken a big dip south on the thermometer. It had been above 70 when I left Ashfield, the skies empty of everything except the promise of a beautiful late-spring Saturday. I couldn't see any vapor trails riding my breath, but five degrees fewer, and I almost certainly would. I supposed that this explained the fog, but the chill itself defied explanations of its own. Oh, I don't suppose it was impossible at all to travel almost three hundred miles and find it thirty degrees cooler than when and where you left. And, yes, this part of the world was, at times, unlucky enough to be hit with March morning air on a May afternoon. Yet, it felt wrong, somehow. I couldn't really explain why, not then, but I did grab my jacket from the back seat. It had been there, unused, for about a month, and it may well have stayed there until September rolled along and pushed away the summer. Smelled a bit musty, but that was no big deal.

A small, ugly little shack stood off to the side. No signs were posted to tell of its function, but it only took a little detective work to find the entrance. It was open, with no door, and I went inside, stepping into a room choked with darkness and stink. The inside wall had been used as a sort of advertising board, still displaying tattered shouters for what looked to be a gentleman's club, plus a few others aged to the point of illegibility. The stench tipped me off to this place being a restroom, and it was a true work of art. If my eyes and nose were anything to go by, this baby was severely past due for a cleaning. By about three decades, was my guess. Graffiti marked the pitted walls so completely, it might almost classify as a montage, and the floor was even worse. It looked as if someone had taken a dump years ago, left it unflushed, and it took to growing like a fungus. All of this conspired to leave a fragrance unlike any I'd ever sampled before, and hoped never to sample again, but it wasn't acute. I didn't like it, but six hours on the road did leave me with a full set of kidneys. I chose the closest urinal and did my business. Nothing happened when I pushed the flush lever.

The sinks were dry, too. Lucky day for germs, I supposed. The mirror over the middle sink sported an oily stain, but it was clear enough otherwise. I almost didn't even recognize the face looking back at me. Dark circles ringed the skin on either side of the bridge of his nose. The eyes were shot through with tiny red stripes. Dirty blond hair went this way and that in thick, greasy strips in defiance of my attempt to shower them away. I'd had more than a bit to drink last night, and thus, I had dealt with a hangover this morning, but I saw a man in the mirror whose morning-after suffering had not yet climaxed. The man in the mirror was a veteran of hangovers, I'll admit, and by the look of him, last night's bender was a thing of legend. I made a half-assed stab at fixing my hair, and watched as the man in the mirror ran his inverted right hand down his weary face. It paused for a moment when it covered my eyes, perhaps out of hope that, when it moved, it would take away that pitiful image as it went. When it did move, the man in the mirror was plainly disappointed.

Outside, the chill seemed to have deepened. I found myself near a short retaining wall guarding the edge of a very steep incline. On a clear day, you could see all the way across the lake, to what the locals call the Old Town. As it was, I could just barely make out a series of undulating silhouettes, the presumably silent hills which inspired the town's founders. The fog wasn't so bad up here, but the town sat in a bowl, and my scenic cliff formed a part of its edge. Looking down, I could see no more than thirty feet. Tall, weepy trees poked through, their boles lost to me. I thought that this would be close enough to actually standing on a cloud.

_In my restless dreams, I see that town, Silent Hill. You promised you would take me there again someday, but you never did. Well, I'm alone there now, in our special place. Waiting for you._

I had the letter in my hand, and I re-read it. I don't think I was trying to get any hint out of it, and I sure as hell wasn't trying to make sense of it. The letter was _real_, and it was in my hand. I came here because the letter made it clear that my presence was requested. Well, I was here, and Mary wasn't here to greet my arrival. I hadn't really expected that she would. Did I?

_Of course I didn't._

Of course. No one else was here to greet me, either. So, now what? This whole town was our special place, but that was far too broad. Where should I go? Which part of our special place was more than special? I tried to think. Thinking still didn't come easy, and I had to retrieve the tourist map from the car. It focused mostly on the south shore, a business/residential area called South Vale. On our visit, Mary and I had been through here, but still… Only two locations made themselves immediately apparent to me. One was the Silent Hill Historical Society, which we'd visited on our second day. This was my idea, but I found the place something less than exciting. The most I got out of the experience was the surprise of Mary showing more interest in the place than I did. I had never known my wife to care anything for matters historical, but she was in rare form that day, driving the curator half-crazy with questions, driving _me_ half-crazy for that matter. It wasn't that Silent Hill's history was dull. To be honest, there seemed to be quite a story behind the town's tourist-trap veneer. There just didn't really seem to be much of an effort made by the Society to tell this story. Worse, most of the building was closed off for renovations. The main attraction was the remains of the old prison, closed in the late 1950's, and none of it was accessible while we were there. A nice place, overall, but I couldn't really think of it as a special place. I couldn't envision that being where she awaited me.

The other place was Rosewater Park, about a half-mile east of the Society. At once, I knew I had a winner. Our visit to the museum was something of a lark, a place to have a little fun and possibly learn something. At the park, we entertained no such pretensions. It was small and secluded, and even in the peak of a July afternoon we were not forced to share the spot with but a few others. We explored its lush interiors hung high with manicured hedges ten feet high and ivy-strewn walkways that gave the park the appearance of palace rooms without a ceiling. There were two neat little gazebos, neither occupied at the time. Passing the first, Mary gave me a soft elbow and remarked, in a straight, even voice, that perhaps we could have a quick romp. "If you can get up and over in five minutes," was how she put it, and I couldn't help myself. I cackled with laughter, blindsided.

It was on the lakeside pier where we ended up. This was far enough into the day that the sun had begun to creep off to the west, turning the lake's surface into rippling, liquid fire. That's where we waited out the day. We ate hot dogs purchased from a cart vendor, we took turns gazing across the lake through a set of binoculars mounted on a short pole, and eventually, we just sat on one of the benches, hand in hand, watching as the trees lost definition and became silhouettes against a sky that went from yellow to rusty orange to purple.

I imagined that, if I could recall things that well, and the recollection wrought in me such a wicked twist of longing, that I had my destination. Rosewater Park it would be. It would be a matter of five minutes by car, but there didn't seem to be any way around the barrier. Someone had hung a series of placards spelling out the word WELLCOME! I had to wonder if that person appreciated the irony of placing a WELLCOME sign which blocked the only road access to town on this side of Toluca Lake. A sign off to the right bore the lake's name, with a finger pointing toward concrete steps. I stood at the top of these, looking down into the soupy gloom. The bottom wasn't visible from up this high, and I didn't know exactly what I would be getting into, but the map seemed to offer a squiggly outline which presumably indicated a natural trail of some kind. It was a trail which canted to the west and spilled out into town. Assuming there were no blockages down that way, it seemed like a way to go. I could walk to the park. I could see if it was the special place. I could also turn right around, right now, and get back in my car. The rational part of my mind screamed at me to do just that, screamed with the intensity of a child who knows he is being ignored and has had it up to here with the silent treatment.

I deserve at least the credit of understanding how crazy it was to walk down those stairs, though this understanding arrived only after I started to do so. After all, I always reserved the right to turn back if things didn't work out as I anticipated.


	3. Chapter 3: Walking Among the Dead

Chapter 03: Walking Among the Dead

At no point did it occur to me to count the number of steps I'd taken, nor to time myself in taking them. Had I done either, perhaps I would have had some tangible basis for wondering just how far I had gone when the last step was not old concrete but the soft dirt of the nature trail. There was no way of knowing, short of turning back around and making a circuit of it and such knowledge was not important enough to justify doing so. Still, I'd been right; the fog was awful down here. The steps I'd descended now appeared to ascend into a cloud. Past about a dozen or so, I could see nothing. I'd never seen anything like it. In a strictly accurate sense, I wasn't seeing much of anything, period. My field of vision had contracted to a small sphere of about twenty feet, with me at the center of it. This was enough for me to note that my path was very narrow, even as I started along it. A sheer face of dirt, rock and scrub stood to my left. To the right was probably the same thing, though it fell away and out of sight on that side. There were no rails, and if I took a spill, it would be a long, painful series of bounces until I either hit a patch of level ground or splashed down in the lake, and only a miracle would see me get that far without breaking bones.

Had it been clear, I would probably have been treated to a spectacular view of the lake and the narrow strip of woods which formed its lower lip. What I got instead was a living photograph taken by a camera with a severely unfocused lens. I supposed I would grow used to it after awhile, but at the moment, it was bringing back ghosts of my early-morning headache. All I could do to combat this was keep my gaze down on my shoes, the only things visible to me with any clarity. My shoes made soft crunching sounds as they pressed into the dirt, and that was most of what there was to hear, aside from the chittering of branches and shrubbery from the wind.

And, something moved within them. Off to the left. I came to a stop, cocking my ear. As if understanding that it had been sensed, the source of the sound ceased to make it.

"Hello?" I called out. There was no response, and that didn't surprise me. How long had it been, how far had I come, since I'd last seen a human being? I tried to remember and couldn't, but it would have had to be somewhere on the road. I tried hailing again, and got silence as a response. Couldn't see anything either, though I judged that the noises came from beyond my range of vision anyway. A full minute went by, and I resumed walking, unsure of whether I'd really heard anything at all.

And I didn't get five paces before I froze, my senses overriding everything. There _was _something, and not just the rustling of movement disturbing the close foliage. A guttural sound, unmistakably vocal, but nothing I could imagine possible from human cords. My belly had gone to ice in an instant. I could feel sweat near my brows, in spite of the unseasonable chill. Yeah, something was out there, all right, something hidden by the fog and the treeline.

I heard it again, louder still, not apparently concerned by me remaining motionless, and without my own movement to confuse my senses, the growl carried very clearly. This was too much for my overtaxed mind, not just the inhumanity of the noise but that it had somehow halved the distance, close and getting closer, and if I stayed where I was, I should see it. A part of me wanted to do this, to apply rationality to a situation rapidly losing any sense of it. And, I broke into a run, because the other part of me won the battle. I ran away not thinking that it was just some stray dog, not even thinking that it could perhaps be something as exotic as a timberwolf. My imagination turned against me, spurring me on by visions of fang-studded jaws, trailing the hungry drool of a very intent carnivore. Something man-sized and murderous, something which would, in two seconds, maybe as many as five, leap from the mist and knock me—

--down. I never saw what it was that tripped me, a rock or branch or even just a divot in the path. Either way, I had been looking over my shoulder instead of down at my feet, and when I hit whatever I hit, there was no avoiding the tumble. The fall wasn't painful, but I'm not sure I'd have noticed right away even if it was. I wasn't thinking of any injury as minor as a twisted ankle or a bruise where I'd landed on my elbow. My imagination fed me images of gouged flesh, of long, ragged slashes, of limbs savaged and chewed right down to the bone. My imagination was in control, and even as I tried to reassert control, my fingers left claw marks of their own in the dirt, not scrabbling for leverage, but to drag myself forward, to get me away from whatever was behind me, no matter how I did it, and not look back, because if I did, what would I see? Maybe nothing. Probably nothing. And, just perhaps, something with red, angry eyes. Something with vice-like jaws lined with yellow razor-blades. Control did come back to me, though. I may be crazy to follow that letter, but that didn't mean I actually had to lose my mind.

Trees rustled in the breeze, and from a long way down, waves lapped at the shore. Louder than all that, my breath came in deep hitches. Rationality had reasserted itself in my mind, but my body needed a moment to catch up. I heard nothing else, though. Nothing louder than the windy rustle came from the tree line, no large animal-made disturbance made itself known. No throaty growl, no evidence of slavering hunger. Just the imagination farting loudly in church, that was all. Nothing to be afraid of.

Yet, it required another force of will to open my eyes. Straight ahead, there was no slobbering demon-beast. In fact, there was nothing at all. My tumble had taken me near to the edge, and I'd blindly dragged myself even closer to it. The wind chilled me everywhere now, and I still pumped sweat in spite of it. I had to consciously not consider the likelihood that I may have dragged myself right over the cliff in my baseless terror. It would be a hell of a fall, too. Far down as I could see, it was almost a straight drop, and god only knew what protrusions would await me on the way down. Sharp rocks, roots, even trees, I was sure, and if I had gone over, by the time I came to a stop, they would have done a great many of the same injuries I imagined could have come from the noisy thing in the woods.

_Maybe that was what it wanted_.

That was silly. There was no 'it'. I was just having the boogies, that was all. There was too much going on, and I was just having trouble coping. There was no monster in the woods. I'd just daydreamed it.

Yet, I couldn't help be reminded of a story I'd heard once, about an Algonquian legend. The creature was known as the wendigo, and it was said to stalk men who traveled alone. The wendigo would follow its prey, making its presence known but never allowing itself to be seen, never actually making a move except to keep close. The traveler would, in due course, go mad under the pressure, the fear of being hunted by something unseen but inherently dangerous. That's when the beast would finally make its move, and the luckless traveler would be torn apart by his own delusion, devoured by his own nightmare come to life.

"Get it together, old boy," I said aloud, needing to hear my own voice. It may not have worked otherwise. There was no such thing as the wendigo. Just fairy-tale horseshit, and that was final. I would accept no more debate on the subject.

It was, too. Once the natural order of things had been re-confirmed, I was able to get to my feet and brush myself off. Boogeymen and unseen monsters seemed much less plausible once I was upright. This was how things should be. Only a fool lets himself get carried away like that. The first step was easy, and I was walking again down the path, sure of everything. I heard no sounds other than those that should have been there.

Eventually, the cliff receded, and the ground spread out a little, going off into an even grade and more of the same brush. At one point, I came upon an old water well, and I passed it without examining. Deep holes like that just give me the creeps.

Soon, the natural facings on either side became roundstone walls, and the path came to an end at a big gate made of rusty wrought-iron. It opened, but only under squealing protest. I found myself in a clearing, spreading out in all three directions out of site. A number of stones dotted the landscape, irregular but definitely man-made. The first one I examined had a name, Emil Radcliff, above a date, Aug 27, 1939. It was a cemetery. Some of the stones showed nothing, having been worn smooth by age and merciless New England elements. I saw one as old as a hundred and thirty years. None of them were any younger than I was, though I guessed that there could be one or two that were. I had no desire to check them all for confirmation. This wasn't really any place for me to be, was it? Graveyards were spooky enough under normal circumstances.

As if to reinforce how abnormal circumstances were, I heard movement again, and that brought an immediate flare-up of adrenaline. Oh, I really didn't need this now, not here. And, I wouldn't let it. I would not run away, but step toward. It was high-time for me to stop jumping at every little noise.

The figure squatting near the cluster of headstones wasn't a monster, or even a large, hungry animal of real existence. It was a young woman in a cream-colored turtleneck and pants the color of ochre. The relief I felt was entirely palpable. It coursed through me like cool water.

"Excuse me, miss—"

It wasn't my intent to startle her, and, to be honest, I didn't. She was alone and had clearly expected to remain that way, because she actually jumped at the sound of my voice. When she turned to face me, I found myself seeing surprise and fright. She took a step back.

"Oh! I'm… I'm sorry! I was just…"

"No, it's okay," I said. "I didn't mean to scare you. I'm just a little lost, that's all."

"Lost?" The look she gave me almost brought me to laugh. The one-word question had an odd lilt to it, as if my being lost made less sense than her behaving as if I'd caught her doing something she shouldn't have been doing.

"Yeah. I'm trying to get to Silent Hill, but I can't tell if I'm going the right way. Am I?" I pointed in what I hoped was the general direction that would take me to the second part of the feeder path I'd seen on the map.

"Um, yeah," she said, and nodded. "It's hard to see with all the fog, but there's only this one road. You can't miss it."

"Thanks." I couldn't really think of anything else to say, and it was plain that this woman—this girl, really—would rather be without my presence.

"Wait—" she said, stopping me after a few steps.

"Yes?"

She didn't say anything for a moment. Her eyes went down to her feet, and she was set in concentration, as if trying to put together what she wanted to say. "This, uh, that is, the town—I think you shouldn't go there. Something's… wrong with it. I don't know how to explain, really, it's just that—"

"Wrong how? Is it dangerous?" I asked, and, quite involuntarily, the question brought with it the memory—the _imagined_ memory—of animal noises on my flank, just out of sight.

"I don't know. Maybe. It's not just the fog, either. It's—"

"It's all right," I said, raising a hand to stop her. "I'll be careful."

"I'm not lying!"

"I don't think you are," I said. "It's just that, it doesn't matter. I'm going anyway, whether it's dangerous or not."

"But, why?" She regarded me as though I was suggesting something illogical and that I should try to explain how it wasn't. I had no idea if that was possible, and besides, I felt little desire to discuss the issue anyway.

"Because I'm looking for someone."

"Who—who is it?" Her voice wavered in the middle. Was it fright? It did strike me as such, in her body language as much as her words. She could not maintain eye contact, and she was as fidgety as a child enduring a scolding. I wondered if she was on the run from someone, and if my statement made it sound as though I was on the hunt.

"Someone very important to me. If I could be with her again… I'd give up the whole world for that."

She relaxed visibly, so perhaps my guess had some basis. "Me too, sort of," she said, sounding not quite so dull and colorless as before. "I'm looking for my mama. I mean, my mother. I haven't seen her in forever. There's also my brother and my father. I thought they were here, too, but I couldn't find any of them." A pause, and she looked at me, away from the gravestones. "I'm sorry. I-it's not your problem."

"No," I said. I guessed that she interpreted my faraway look as a lack of interest. To be honest, there was some truth to it. I really just wanted to get on my way. "I mean, I hope you're able to find them."

"You too," she said, and turned back to the cluster of headstones she'd been examining upon my arrival.

I made my way towards where I'd pointed before, moving almost blind through the worn and broken monoliths until I came upon the stone retaining wall. Using it as a guide, I first came upon a small pond. The surface rippled under the drive of wind, then going in a hundred directions as they encountered the thickets of reeds and water ferns which choked parts of the pool. Past that was a shack of some kind, imposing and vaguely sinister in spite of its stature. I guessed that it was a mausoleum, but whatever it was, it could not have any bearing on my goals. Then, I saw another rust-scaled iron gate, and I passed through it feeling some comfort. In spite of the girl's warning, the very presence of another person was promising, and I felt I could go forth unhindered by my mind's own trickery and this otherwise vacant and fuzzy landscape, which only encouraged its misbehavior.


	4. Chapter 4: Alone in the Town

**04: Alone in the Town**

A trail had led to a gate, and now another gate had led to another trail. This one may have also been a tidy little nature walk at one point, and before that perhaps a logging road, but now there were barricades, construction equipment, and other such encroachments of civilization. Instead of trees and thick undergrowth, I walked through a valley of bare dirt on either side, as if this part of the path had been recently dug up. I guessed that it was set to be paved. Sometimes the dirt wall fell away, leading into valleys that would take me God knew were, but these were all cordoned off by fencing, sometimes consisting of barbed wire strung between posts. None were more than waist-high, and I could have climbed over most if I wanted to, but that was okay. According to my map, I could follow this to Wiltse Road and, not far past that, into town. No need to go exploring through the brush.

However, though these things strongly suggested nearby population, they didn't prove it. Nobody manned the equipment or handled the tools. There were no sounds of speech, clashing of iron and rock, or the flatulence of heavy machinery. I saw more artifacts of development as I approached South Vale, among them a pickup truck and an old white panel van, but that was all. My encounter in the cemetery looked ever more anomalous. Where the hell was everyone?

The hills to either side fell away quickly, and my path was now bound entirely by fences and makeshift barriers, each one different in appearance. Abruptly, a much larger one appeared before me, this one made of stone and concrete. It was another overpass, if the guard rail on its rim was any indication. I had assumed such a convergence would appear on my map, and I was right. Above me was Nathan Avenue, the portion blocked off by the messy barricade near the scenic outlook. This meant that the town proper was just ahead. Knowing this made me quicken my pace.

This lasted a whole five seconds, because then I came to a complete stop, again listening for noises I was sure I'd heard. A few moments of this gave me nothing, but when I resumed walking, it was at a slower pace and with my attention still focused outward. And, this time, I did hear them. Footsteps, slower than mine and therefore outside of my rhythm. When I halted again, so did they, and when I moved, they moved. This happened again once after. This gave me the distinct feeling that I was being stalked, but nothing revealed itself to offer visual evidence. Nothing growled, though, or snarled. There was nothing animal in this, and though they began again, this was enough for me to at least try to ignore whatever it might be. When the muffled grit under my feet became the slap of shoe leather on concrete, the phantom footsteps ceased.

I had to follow the pitted, flaking construct a bit before I found the actual underpass. It was a mess of old newspaper and dry litter, stretching into a foggy void. Whatever lay on the other end was still out of sight. Some of those papers shuffled about, and one wrapped itself around my leg. I peeled it off and saw that it was the front page of the _Silent Hill Tribune_. The date was May 4, ten days ago. I let it fall to the floor and proceeded through a chain-linked gate bisecting the length of the tunnel.

The concrete floor of the underpass gave way to the ashy color of pavement. This was Wiltse Road, and though it seemed too narrow to support automobile traffic, a guard rail marked the edge of the street to my right. A good thing, too, because it was a long way down in that direction. Wiltse was little more than a narrow shelf carved into a nearly vertical wall of rock. I could look to my left and see what I'd probably see if I stood at the bottom of the cliff to my right. It was a strong suggestion of broken bodies, should any happen to bounce against its face on the way down.

There wasn't much to see as I made my way along Wiltse's gentle curves. Eventually, the natural barriers of rock gave way to fencing, first the ranch-style log kind you might see in an old western, then the slat-board kind that rose above my head, and then buildings, past which Wiltse Road came to an end. This was Sanders Street, and it was a real one as opposed to what was essentially little more than a paved track. The map told me that I could follow Sanders to Lindsey Street, and from there to Nathan Avenue, and that was what I wanted to do, because Rosewater Park was just off of Nathan. It wouldn't be very far.

The idea that Sanders Street was a legitimate artery of civilization seemed to be more theory than reality as I went along its sidewalk, and it wasn't a theory that I found comfortable at all. It wasn't the first unusual thing about this little adventure of mine, but it was the first that really unnerved me. I could reconcile myself with the chilly weather. It should be nice and warm, but a cold snap was hardly outside the realm of possibility even as late as mid-May. I've seen snow on the ground on Easter Sunday. The fact that I'd seen a total of one person since parking my car didn't raise any red flags either. I'd come in through the back door, after all.

But now I saw that it was more than that. Sanders Street was deserted. I don't use that word in place of merely sparse, but in the true spirit: there was no evidence that people inhabited this place. Nobody made their way along the sidewalks on foot. There were cars parked by the curb, but none moved. And, just in case I might fool myself into thinking that my limited vision was just preventing me from seeing the people who had to be there, my ears verified what my eyes suspected. Toluca Lake was, from where I stood, hundreds of feet distant in any direction, so I could not hear its laps and breaks, but other than that, I could close my eyes and easily imagine I was back at the outlook with my car behind me and quiet all around me, plausible quiet because I was still almost a mile outside of the town's fringes. So, this raised quite a valid question:

Where the hell was everyone?

I suppose I may have called out to see if anyone would answer, but I was already making my way north along the street, and by the time it occurred to me to announce my presence, it occurred to me that it wasn't just the lack of people. I saw no dogs or cats, which I might not even on a normal day, but neither did I see or hear any birds, and in a town carved out of Maine's solid block of forest as this one was, bird conversation is practically inescapable except during particularly bad weather. That was, I think, what really impressed the situation upon me, even more than the apparent lack of human habitation. There were no jays warbling, no finches chattering. The loons usually wouldn't pipe up in force this early, but I remembered seeing probably six million gulls swarming the area like flies, their mournful shrieks a constant piece of the local melody, not even really shutting up at night. And they were all gone.

Realizing this, I felt a prick of fear. For the first time in my entire life, I accepted as fact a concept that I'd never had cause to consider before: it's incredibly unnerving to discover that you're alone in a place where you should not ever be alone, where you should, at all times, be in the company of hundreds, if not thousands, of people. A place which should be constantly populated did not, as a general rule, disappear without reason. Entire towns do not wake up one morning and collectively decide to take off for kicks. Something must have happened. But what?

There was also the letter to consider in all this, too. My capacity for accepting coincidence could not stretch far enough for me to believe that there was no connection at work. Yes, I did follow it, but I followed it mindful that it lacked any foundation in what I knew to be the truth. My wife was dead. I knew that there was no possibility of actually finding her, standing on the lakeside platform and waiting for my arrival. I was neither crazy nor stupid. It was entirely possible to rationalize my actions by stating what was very likely to be the truth: I never really coped with losing Mary. I had never been able to really come to grips, and it was wrecking what life I still had. If something drastic didn't happen, the cliff was dangerously close and I was going at it full gallop. Coming here was the drastic thing. Being here, in a place I knew to be special to Mary beyond any other, would be the salve my soul so desperately needed. I was here, as the preachers like to say, to be saved.

And, as wonderful as all that was, it meant nothing, because even though there was only one real flaw in my whole rationalization, it was tremendous. Fatal, in fact.

_Where did the letter come from?_

I couldn't account for it, and now, on an empty street of a town inexplicably desolate, I found it impossible to simply ignore. Where had the letter come from, and why did I follow it into such a place as this? What had happened here?

As if in response to my unspoken question, a dark green box materialized nearby. _Silent Hill Tribune _was etched down the side in peeling white letters. One of the papers remained in the faceplate, and though I didn't have any pocket change, I could still make out today's date through the dirty Plexiglas, next to Morning Edition—as if a little backwater like Silent Hill actually rated an evening reprise. So, whatever had gone down had gone down within the last handful of hours, probably as I hurrying toward it. And, though it _seemed_ quiet and deserted, that could just be a farce. Maybe it was still going down elsewhere in town. This made me feel very little inclination to announce my presence to whatever might be out there, and I continued up the road now quiet and alert.

Within a few spans, I found what I thought was the answer, and it was one I had desperately hoped not to find. It was as if a great hand descended from the heavens wielding an enormous paintbrush, which it then dragged in what I thought was series of irrational swipes. Had this really been so, it would be possible to imagine that it was only red paint. Of course, it was not. Nor was it random, at least, not entirely. The bloody streaks were in a line curving to the right, onto Lindsey Street. Naturally, I looked in the direction to which it seemed to point, and when I saw the moving shadow, I at first dismissed it as just more sensory tricks, just the fog swirling in the wind and producing patterns of things that weren't there. I had, in all probability, seen a hundred such patterns since getting out of my car, and the only reason this one registered was because I really was looking for something.

Except, it did not vanish with the next gust, as I had wholly expected would happen, because it wasn't a mist mirage at all. It was a person, standing still on clearly unsteady feet for a second or two, and then moving away from me with a pronounced stagger. This time I did call out, all thought of caution gone buried under a profound sense of relief. Finally, I could get some answers, and better still, I now knew that the place wasn't abandoned at all. There were still people here, and maybe something had happened and a lot of people had gone away, but some had also clearly stayed behind. I took off after the retreating person, assuming that, at a jog, I would overtake them in seconds.

After ten of those seconds passed, my assumptions fell apart. Not only had I not caught up to the person, I hadn't even seen its shadow in the fog. I had, however, come upon another crimson swipe on the pavement. As the first one angled onto Lindsey Street, so too did this one hang right, into what seemed to be an alley. Another arrow of blood to point the way, and against my better judgment, I followed it.

I had passed a receiving yard a few yards back, but the gate closing it off was large and old. The figure could not have hidden within it, because I'd have heard it open and close without doubt in this quiet. Solid walls offered otherwise impenetrable borders. I thought again of the bloody streaks behind me, and my pace slowed involuntarily. What if, instead of a victim, I had encountered one of the victimizers? What if there was some dangerous, bloodthirsty psychopath lying in wait, unsated and gleeful at the prospect of another victim stupidly walking right into his clutches?

That should have been enough to turn me around and get me out of this alley—hell, out of this _town_—but the person I saw didn't seem a likely candidate for psycho-killer status. To judge by size, I had either seen a teenager or a small woman. Sure, it wasn't impossible for either category to engage in such behavior, but the odds didn't seem to suggest it. Besides, the staggering shuffle might have indicated injury, and wasn't it possible that I may have scared them in much the same manner? Enough maybe to spur an injured person to run? So, yeah, I kept going.

Paved road abruptly gave way to another path of dirt and another construction area, this one enclosed in a tall, chain-link fence. The gate shouted bright yellow warnings of CAUTION and an admonition to locate a hard hat. It was also ajar, and I could see the faint divots of staggered footprints in the soft earth, leading into the gap like a guideline. Really, shouldn't I leave well enough alone? The sign stressed CAUTION, and I had seen enough movies to have followed my pop-culture indoctrination. When you saw a sign like that in a high-tension situation featuring a lone protagonist, you always knew there was something to it beyond its laconic real purpose. That's where the killer lay in wait. That's where the bomb was, with ten seconds remaining on its timer. That's where you, as an observer in the audience, were perplexed by the character's ignorance of obvious danger. This was where you couldn't understand why this hapless idiot wouldn't turn around and run like hell and not stop until he was out of breath.

This _wasn't _a movie, though. This was real life, where unpredictability could, in fact, work in your favor. The general situation demanded care, but I was not about to believe that I was walking into a stupid movie trope.

I hadn't heard it at first, thanks to both distance and the ever-present moan of the wind, and even when it finally did register, I couldn't identify it for what it was. At first, I thought it was an air leak of some kind, but that would require an accompaniment of running machinery and there definitely wasn't any of that nearby. There was something else, though: a squeal which had no tone but did possess a flexible and irregular pitch.

And now, standing before yet another barricaded underpass, I tried to peer through the sloppy construction and see what was causing the racket, though I was pretty sure I knew what it was. The interior was gloomy, and a fence sealed the other end of the small tunnel entirely, but I was easily able to climb through the makeshift latticework on my end. Sure enough, a portable radio sat on an old drum, its screeching amplified by the close quarters. It was not the cheap cookie-cutter Chinese garbage you could find in a Wal-Mart these days but a classic transistor radio, heavy and elegant. I couldn't tell its make in this light, but it was undoubtedly similar to the beautiful old Realistic I'd inherited from my old man, upon which I'd listened to Cream and The Who and Bad Company until I got a turntable for my thirteenth birthday. I felt for the tuning knob and twisted it one way, then another, trying to pick up anything I could. I was hoping to catch a news report, though that was not much of an expectation. If Silent Hill's sorry state had become newsworthy to any degree, I would have certainly seen more than just a timid woman in a cemetery. I'd see news vans and authorities of every imaginable sort. It'd be a circus.

There was no news report. No music, either. Various frequencies gave me different kinds of static, but from one end of the band to the other, static was all I got. I shook it and slapped its plastic casing, applying the time-honored American imperative to make electronic appliances work through the application of violence. It practically never works and did not now. Was it broken? Maybe, but I had tons of concrete right above me, too. Getting out into the open might bring better results.

Just then, the shrilling grew louder, as it would have if I had thumbed the volume dial. That I had not brought me to pause, not sure at first if it was just me giving myself the creeps again. But, no, not this time. It wasn't just shrilling now, it was _howling_. Noise burst from within and bounced back off the walls and low ceiling to hit my eardrums like cymbals. The radio itself actually vibrated with the force of it. And even though the radio tried hard to deafen me, its high and tinny squalls couldn't mask the low grumble I heard off to my left.

The thing rose to its feet, its form a smaller silhouette emerging from the larger darkness near the end of the tunnel. It spoke in a wet, unintelligible gurgle, a sound not even close to being words of any kind I knew. Once it was upright, it seemed to be an effort to stay that way. A drunken sway marked its first step toward me, one that only by miracle did not sent it crashing back to the ground, and I backed away in kind. I couldn't help it. I had, over the course of the last hour, seen a lot of things I could generously term 'unusual' and freaked myself out by imagining all sorts of things.

This _should _have been the same, because it defied rationalization. I could not see the figure as anything but a moving shadow, but that was enough. If it was a person, they were wrapped tightly in a bag of some kind, constricting the entire upper body. Its head grew right out of its shoulders, and those shoulders were just rounded ends. The arms were missing. And, with all this being true, it was the way it moved which denied any idea that it was human. Even as it took another step in my direction, the entire upper body contorted with great, jerking lunges, as if electric current pumped into it at random intervals. One such lunge seemed certain to knock it on its back, yet it seemed to find some kind of amazing, impossible balance.

I heard the wet _hiss_ a fraction of a second before the air was filled with spray. This sent me stumbling back, half in a blind panic, and a damned good thing I did. Droplets of this mist came to rest on my hand, which immediately came to life in a thousand tiny pinpricks of fire. It had _spit_ at me, and it burned like acid. I ground my hand into the folds of my jacket to get it off, and then I cried out as I backed into something solid. I whirled around, certain that another one of these… these _monsters_… had crept up on me, and trapped between two of them…

But, no—it was the barricade. Independent of any conscious thought, I'd gripped one of the boards. It was loose, wiggling like a tooth, and I yanked it free. _Oh, no, man, _I thought, _you're not doing that. Climb back through and get your ass out of here!_ But, I couldn't do that. Maybe it could run, too. It was all herky-jerky movement _now_, but how did I know it couldn't run? Did I want to find out the hard way?

And if I was wrong, would I live to regret it?

This wooden plank wasn't much of a weapon to look at, but it gave an evil whistle as I lashed out. Any remaining illusion I had of this creature being human evaporated when the plank struck it what should have been its neck, because no set of human vocal cords could ever produce a cry like the one I heard. It was a mournful sort of sound, the kind that you might hear from two pieces of overstressed metal grinding against one another. That was almost enough to make me strike again. Seeing it lean back the way it did provided the rest. This time, I brought it down overhead, like a sledgehammer. It was a square blow, and powerful. I cried out and spun away as something splashed my face, dropping the stick and slapping at my face like some kind of maniac, certain that I'd been shot in the face by its venom, _feeling _it eat through my eyelids—and they wouldn't last long, would they?

It wasn't acid, though. When I brought my hands away, my face stung a bit from me rubbing on it so hard, but that faded quickly. Then, I remembered bringing down the wooden plank, the moment of impact as it connected with the creature's head—and the awful sensation of downward motion resuming as its skull caved in. What happened from there was only obvious.

That thought, calm as it was, made my gorge hit the ceiling, and I twisted around just in time to prevent splashing myself as my stomach roiled and then evicted everything that was in it. There wasn't much, but that only made it worse, because it _wanted_ to let go of more than I had, and by the end of it, I was on hands and knees, coughing, sucking breath, coughing again, sucking breath again, and _praying_ that it didn't make me pass out. The creature didn't concern me anymore. I was sure I'd killed it. If I hadn't, I'd have known it by now. One thing at a time.

Subjectively, a week passed before I felt ready to try standing again, but I managed without much trouble. I couldn't see the thing at all now, but it hadn't gone anywhere. A magnificent reek pervaded the tunnel to let me know it was still there, something wet and oily and thick enough to gag, the ripe stench of thick rot under a beating sun. It was time to get gone from here, if not for the sake of the aroma, then for the vague shape I saw leaning against the fencing at the other end. I didn't know if it was just my imagination telling me that I saw a man's body slumped against the mesh, or if it was my senses telling me that perhaps my fallen foe had company. Either way, I had no interest in finding out. I climbed back through the latticework—but not before I retrieved the wood plank. I needed all the reassurance I could get.

The fog was no less claustrophobic than it had been, but five minutes in the tunnel gave it a roomy appeal it hadn't had before. The air was cold but fresh, and I took a few great gulps of it to rid myself of the experience. It helped a little, but I couldn't ignore the dark red splash marking the business end of my new weapon.

I had, however, forgotten entirely about the radio. Throughout the course of events, it ended up in my jacket pocket, and had decided to go quiet since then. Fiddling with the volume dial made the steady hiss grow and shrink, but a steady hiss was all I got. Static dominated the AM band as it had before, but it wasn't the intense screeching it had been.

The needle stopped just past 1100 mHz, because that's when I heard the voice. It could barely break through the static, and most of what I heard was the tone of a person's voice rather than any distinct words. A few did, most of them being hash and garble. Only one word sounded clear, not just enough for me to hear the word but for me to recognize the voice, which could have never happened unless it was a voice long familiar to me. This brought my heart to race even more than had the attacker in the tunnel, because the speaker on the radio was my wife. The one word I caught wasn't a word, but a name.

_My_ name.


	5. Chapter 5: A World of Madness

**05: A World of Madness**

I decided to hold onto the radio.

The encounter with the thing behind the barricade negated any possible attempt for me to simply dismiss what I'd heard as a hallucination of the ear. There was no way to know whether I really had been stalked by some hungry thing up on that trail, but monsters turned out to be intuition rather than imagination. That was the sort of thing that shot arrows into the heart of cynicism, and not just about monsters. After that, I could really believe that Mary had somehow transmitted a message to me through this radio, even if the message itself was lost to me, and if I could believe that, I could also believe that my letter was legit. This was why when I reached the mouth of Lindsey Street, I went north instead of south.

I made my way up the street lacking any pretense of casual strolling. There was no Boris Badenov-style sneaking involved, but I made sure each step taken was as careful and quiet as I could. Squinting into the fog brought my headache back with a brass band, and paid little in the way of dividends. Each shifting, amorphous imprint could be another one of those things, and even though none of them actually were, I was already building a vast stretch of paranoia. The only real freedom I got out of this was that anything that really _did_ move could be considered a threat.

That was a thought of which I no longer had any doubt. Whatever happened to Silent Hill appeared to be pervasive. I had managed to steal glances at shop doors or windows, seeing dark, vacant interiors and "Sorry! We're Closed!" signs on display several times. They were closed, too, and locked. The place should be crawling with cops at the very least, considering the state of things. If I could get to a telephone, I could call them myself—or could I? The lack of official response argued strongly that making outside contact wasn't possible. Not that I exactly wished to make any such contact. I did have a job of my own to do here, and selfish or not, if Silent Hill became a nationally-known crisis on CNN, it went without saying that my search for Mary would run into some rather profound roadblocks.

Concerned over what might be the most profound emergency situation in American history, and focusing visually on trying to see anything in motion that I didn't want near me, I very nearly found out the hard way that Lindsey Street would not be taking me to Nathan Avenue—not today, and probably not any time in the foreseeable future. I'd seen news footage of a sinkhole in Atlanta last year, and that was bad even on TV. What I saw here was far worse, because its depths were lost in the fog, as was the opposite shore of the abyss. I assumed there _was_ another shore, but perched where I was, how could I know for sure? For all I could tell, this was the precipice of world's end, the 20th Century ideal of what ancient men believed existed beyond the horizons.

When I want, I can exhibit a vigorous single-minded approach to certain goals. This is why, in spite of Silent Hill being in the midst of what had to be its worst day ever, I traced the fissure from one end to the other in hopes that there still existed some way around it. Everything thus far suggested very strongly that I should be running in the other direction, as fast as I could, over the river and through the woods, back to my car and, from there, anywhere on Planet Earth but where I was. Nonetheless, what I cared about primarily was getting to Rosewater Park.

It wouldn't be by way of Lindsey Street. Whatever had created this colossal divot cared nothing for keeping it between the curbs. On either side, the rows of houses had been abbreviated quite savagely, torn in half as if by giant hands, each with one half gone forever and the other half still standing but ceasing abruptly in a ragged fan of aluminum siding and broken beams. So, that was that, for this street, at least. A look at my map showed me Neely Street, two blocks over after I backtracked a bit. It didn't seem likely that it suffered the same apocalyptic damage as this, but how dumb would I have to be to simply assume so? Nevertheless, I wouldn't know until I saw, and if it was intact, it would take me where I needed to go.

A hissing came from my pocket. I reached in and pulled out the radio, a flower of excitement blossoming in my stomach. I hadn't gone very far from where I'd found it, but sometimes that was all it took to move from a dead radio zone to total clarity. The station was set to 710 MHz, where I'd left it after Mary's attempt to reach me through it. I raised the volume and held it close to my ear, straining to hear in case this message came through garbled. The radio grew louder as the seconds passed, but there were no words hidden within the curling static. I held it away now, hesitating a bit and then played with the tuner. Pops, hisses and squeals sang a dissonant chorus, but this was a song without lyrics. Was there anything I could do? There was an antenna, but the angle of its tilt had no effect I could tell.

Or, maybe it did. There came a tapping sound, and initially, I believed it came from the single tinny speaker. It was a single, simple rhythm, as if someone was tatting a slow and even beat on a snare drum. However, when I moved the tuner knob again, the tapping remained constant against the shifting waves of white noise.

Things fell into place rapidly after that. First, I understood that it wasn't the radio producing that sound. By this point, the source itself betrayed its point of origin: somewhere in front of me, rather than the little plastic box in my hand. From my hand, it slipped back into my pocket, muffling its speech but by no means silencing it. This was good, because I needed that hand to work with its partner in gripping the makeshift weapon I'd scavenged from the construction site. Because, intuition kicked in again at this point, telling me that something was about to happen, and I would do well to be prepared for it. For the ten longest seconds of my life, I waited for intuition to bear fruit.

It did not disappoint.

The all-encompassing mist was in a state of perpetual flux, driven in every direction by a series of seemingly omnidirectional wind trails. This was not the sedate blur that often results from a chance encounter of two opposing weather fronts, but the milky, ground-hugging afterbirth of a powerful seasonal storm, _sans_ the storm itself, magnified to some incredible degree by forces unknown. Such confluence gives the observer an infinite confusion of shadows and illusions of the things which may cast them. It's the kind of environment which can take a respectable breed of caution and warp it into paranoia. This lends itself to become perfect camouflage, should something actually lurk within its formless depths. The range of total concealment is uncomfortably close, and it was for all these reasons that the shape had coalesced into definition before I was able to tell it apart from all the false ones surrounding me.

I knew immediately that I was not faced with something human. Even though the shape initially gave me that illusion, that was precisely what had happened when I was trapped at the end of Vachss Road, and I guess something subconscious was at play that wouldn't allow me to repeat the mistake. That, however, only formed the primary reason to dismiss any notions of humanity. The way it walked, it was sort of a chicken-like gait, its thin, bowed legs being the only true appendages it had. Even when darkness reduced it to little more than a living silhouette framed by the dim light of the blocked underpass, I could see that its head seemed to grow right out of its shoulders rather than a neck, and those shoulders conspicuously lacked anything like arms. I could tell in a heartbeat that the thing coming at me now was of the same species—no arms, no neck. But, out here in the middle of Lindsey Street, the light was ample, and now, here, any suggestion of humanity in this shambling figure resolved itself into absurdity. Very little else resolved into anything. The creature itself lacked features. Its head twitched in large, jerky impulse, as if attached to wires that were frayed but still carrying current, but when it spent a heartbeat being still, I saw no features that indicated a face. A thick, oily membrane covered the entire body, giving me the idea that there was, in fact, a grotesque shade of humanity in this thing, a slight body encased in a completely opaque, full-bodied straight jacket. I couldn't tell if it was flesh or plastic. Either could explain the greasy sheen, but what difference did it make to know? The creature, the straight-jacket, did not concern itself with figuring me out. Curiosity wasn't what brought it to a halt two paces in front of me. It reared back, an action one might mistake for a faint, if one did not know better. I did know better, but fascination kept me rooted in place, mind and body locked in a trance of drugged wonder because it was faced with a problem it simply could not explain. I think my jaw may have even hung slack.

Thankfully, there was another part of me, the animal cunning part, I guess, that understood something very important: if I did not move in the next two seconds, the hang-dog look on my face would be erased in a shower of corrosive venom. I heard the angry, pressure-wet hiss before any of my other senses kicked in, but then I saw it, too, a mustard-hued geyser exploded from some unseen cavity in the monster's chest. Those good old animal instincts had kicked in just in time for it to miss me by forearm's length and hit the asphalt with a wet _slap. _A blistering sizzle rose from where it fell, audible over even the shrewish howl of the radio, the sound of chicken dropped into a deep fat fryer. Smoke rose a few inches from that point, whereupon it was caught up in the fog and swallowed by it. It is right around this point where I think to myself that perhaps this would be a _wonderful_ time to get the fuck out here.

It turned to follow me as I took off up the street, but it wasn't capable of anything more than a quick trot. A brisk jog was enough for me to pace it in a hurry, and that would have probably been the end of it. It's instinctual to take off in a direction pointing dead opposite of a threat. The only real subversion to instinct is if another threat lies visible in that direction, and, of course, that was a luxury I could not enjoy. I wasn't sprinting, and it was a good thing, because my pace was just enough that when two more of the straight-jacketed things suddenly materialized at eleven- and one-o'clock, I had just enough time to see them both rearing back like angry cobras. A double blast of dark mist spewed forth in unison. Had I given into my panic moments ago, had I taken off in a run, I would have taken it right in the face.

There's a lag, I discovered, between the point of learning that you were just a stupid, lucky step away from destruction, and the point where that knowledge actually sinks in. While in this gap of wakeful, unconscious thought, it's as if you achieve a very temporary state of uncontrollable, superhuman reaction. I was flanked, but I knew that these creatures were not as nimble as they were fast. I knew that I could skirt either of them if I tried. But, I was caught in the gap. I had become a creature of the nerve endings. That's why I charged the one to my right, hefting the plank as if it were a baseball bat and unloading as if I were Frank Thomas faced with a juicy, hanging curveball. I guess it might have looked almost heroic to an onlooker. This sense of lower operation ceased immediately upon impact, when the nail-spiked end of the board first struck against the creature's skull and then _through_ it as the thin ridge of bone caved in. Had I really swung something hardwood, like a baseball bat, I might have taken its head clean off. Instead, the creature crumpled, all its muscles apparently having shut off like a light switch, and it fell to the ground in a boneless lump. The ruins of its head struck the pavement, and a black starburst exploded from the point of impact. The smell was immediate and overwhelming, and even knowing the other creature was but a dozen feet away wasn't enough for me to keep my gorge down. Thank God I hadn't eaten earlier, because if I had to displace a full breakfast or lunch, it'd have gotten to me first.

I turned and ran, wiping strands from my chin as I did. I took an angle to the right and onto the sidewalk, both so I could cover at least one flank, and so I could better see where Lindsey Street intersected Katz Street. Not even being hip-deep in the monster mash made me consider high-tailing it back to Wiltse and out of town. Even now, beneath the new and immediate imperative to watch out for these impossible monsters, my thoughts had a single foundation, and that foundation was getting to Rosewater Park with all due haste. All would be made clear, both Mary and the state of this place, I convinced myself, if I could only get to the park. It wasn't a very good argument, but I wasn't in a state of mind which required good arguments.

I came to a stop upon reaching the intersection, not because I was gassed, but because I had just now noticed that things had gotten quiet again. The monsters were a few hundred feet in back of me, and at the pace I'd observed, it would take them awhile to catch up, and that was assuming they were capable of tracking me. Yet, it wasn't this knowledge which reassured me.

It was the radio. It had gone quiet again.

I held it again, but this time, I didn't mess with any of the knobs. When I held it close to my ear, I heard pops and crackles, but they were almost inaudible when held at arm's length, even with the volume knob turned to the max. Twice now, it had emitted those awful, tortured sounds—and, both times, I had made acquaintance with one of those shambling, straight-jacketed things immediately thereafter. Was it sensing them, the way a Geiger Counter sensed radiation? Could that even be possible?

The question was unspoken, but I was given two quick answers regardless. First, the radio came to life in my hand, and keeping with my hypothesis, I whirled around. I would not have known it was there, otherwise, and even having that knowledge left me incapable of changing anything. While upright, the thing in the fleshy crazy coat moved about at a sedate pace. This was the one I had laid low—the first thing I saw was the ruins of its skull—and its legs, spread-eagle and parallel to the ground, worked like pistons, pumping at speeds that simply could not be possible for a creature of its size and yet it came and there was nothing I could do about it.

My attempt to dodge this humanoid missile probably saved me from a broken ankle, but even though it only grazed me, there was such power behind the punch that my balance was immediately and irretrievably stolen. I went down hard, landing on both elbows. Twin shocks of pain lanced out in both directions up my arms, and I felt a moment's surety that I'd broken both of them, that in one amazing shot, this formless horror had ensured that I could never again do to his friends what I'd done to him. They weren't broken, though. Within moments, they'd be sporting some fine bruises, and would probably be smarting for days to come, but I still held firm grip on the plank, and when I tried using my arms to push myself upright, they complied. I'd dropped the radio, but it loudly announced its own survival. I picked it up only by groping for it, preoccupied as I was by trying to locate the skittering monster. It was off to my right, still moving about in that impossibly fast shuffle, but it was angled away from me, and after a brief pause, those legs churning like the legs of a cartoon character in full sprint. This burst carried it out of sight, and the radio settled back to near-silence, in confirmation of both the monster's retreat as well as my own ideas of its function. I'd heard no more crackled bursts of voice, but it was valuable nonetheless.

I hugged the north end of Katz Street, and I made it to Neely without any unfortunate encounters. I was half a block up Neely Street when I came upon the distressing but not entirely surprising truth: Whatever had plowed a canyon across Lindsey Street had not bothered stopping simply because that particular avenue had been severed clean. Just how far did it go? And, why did it seem as though the world was out to get me today? This anonymous little town was, by any measure, in a very bad way, but I couldn't wrap my mind around this being coincidental to my being here. From a calm distance, I could easily dismiss such notions as ridiculous, but I was right in the pitching middle of it, and from right up close, I couldn't see these two elements as being disconnected, even if I also could not identify any of the connections as being relative. That was the thing about truly crazy situations I'd never really considered before. Vital clues and nonsense intertwined so closely that it was a nearly impossible task telling one from the other. It was equally difficult to say for sure what made certain clues relevant, and what made others inconsequential. As if this wasn't enough of a clusterfuck, underpinning all of this was the fact that I could only assume that _any_ of this was consequential, and how valuable were the assumptions of a man who came to this place because a woman three years in her grave _insisted on meeting him here_?

So, now I had Munson Street. Once, an anomaly. Twice, a coincidence. Thrice, a trend? I suppose I would find out before too long. It couldn't go on forever like this, though. There was that. Come hell or high water, I would find a way. Turning back wasn't an option. It never really was. I would just have to find a way. So thinking, I came back to Katz Street and continued west.

Past a little restaurant called The Jade Moon, a chain-link fence bordered the crumbling sidewalk with no break. It was half again as high as I was tall and topped with strips of barbed wire. I could only just make out the sense of a building, lurking almost hidden by distance. Every so often, a battered NO TRESPASSING sign adorned a stretch of fence. This was a place that did not want visitors, in the midst of a town that no longer seemed to want visitors in spite of that being its primary reason for existence.

And, yet, it was where I was to go.

Katz Street came to a premature end as well, though this time, the obstacle went up instead of down. It was a giant construction barrier. I'd seen its like before on the side of the Wal-Mart in Ashfield when it had undergone a remodel. Like that one, this was a skeleton of wooden beams and sheet metal covered and connected by skins of waterproofed canvas. I couldn't judge its height, but once this kind of obstacle rose out of sight, it wasn't really worth knowing. It spanned the entire street, leaving a gap between itself and the chain-link fence no wider than my hand.

Surely, nobody was building anything right in the middle of a street. Was there another huge crevasse on the other side of it? Could the town's cataclysm have happened weeks ago, and this was evidence that someone had tried to do something about it? I honestly hoped this wasn't the case, because even when I had the luxury of connecting the monsters to the desolation to the outright destruction, there wasn't much in the way of sensibility. My grasp of the situation would be much simpler if I could tie all of these effects to a single cause. In any case, I was blocked off again. Whether or not there was a pit on the other side, the end result was no different.

Someone had left a message in red spraypaint, across one quadrant of canvas:

**The door which opens in darkness leads to nightmares.**

And, there was a door, just to the right of this cheery admonition. I tried the knob, and it turned, but far too freely, as if the knob itself was unattached to the latching mechanism. I gave it a hard shove, leading with my shoulder. All I got was a little shock of pain. It didn't budge an inch, nor should it have; the hinges were visible. It wouldn't open away from me unless I drove a car into it.

Only one option now remained: Saul Street, a block south. I had no real reason to believe it would pan out. Katz Street had given me the trend, had it not? Past that, only a crazy man _expects_ the trend to break right after it is established. I was not a crazy man. Desperate, perhaps, but not crazy. I would go south to Saul Street—assuming I could make it even _that_ far—and I would not _expect_ an open route. A crazy man would expect. All I would do was hope. If Saul Street didn't let me pass, well, I would hash that problem out once it presented itself. _If_ it presented itself, I added silently.

I had gone only far enough for the barrier to disappear from view when I heard the radio again, like a waterfall from a mile away but growing louder. It was a cry of danger, I understood, and I tensed, scanning the short horizon for signs of danger. The deep clap of one of their heavy feet came into range, bringing with it the dusky, now-familiar form of one of those inhuman things. The stick had a nail still impaling its end, an end now lightly peppered with black droplets, and I held that end aloft, ready to rush forward and introduce it to the approaching threat, but I got only one step toward this end. To my right, another straight-jacket parted the mist and approached, its odd, birdlike gait angled right at me. I backed up and sidled away from the sinister fence, wanting to get to open space. Attacking one of these things was dangerous. Attacking a pair could very well be suicide. By no means did I attribute my last victory to anything resembling heroism on my part.

Attacking a group of three would spell certain doom, and to make that point clear, another one appeared. And another. And _another_. They had spread out, had flanked me. I hoped that was just shitty luck on my part, because if it was a demonstration of intelligence, of coordination, my end was to be immediately finite. I had to get around and away, and not just off this street I was thinking now but truly _away._ Coming here _was_ a mistake. I had to get back to my car and the highway and to anyplace in the entire world but—

—right into the construction barrier. The two farthest on the right closed the gap in two seconds. There was no way I could get around them and avoid getting hosed with their awful, hungry mists. I could shimmy through the last one, or between the last two, only if they had the courtesy to hold still and let me do it. A million tiny dams opened in my capillaries and panic poured forth. Adrenaline pumped from my guts in huge, heaving bursts. I made for the fence, hoping that the leftmost of this gruesome quintet was more generous in its coverage than the rightmost, but nothing doing. There was, in fact, a gap of nearly two feet between the fence and the bird-stepping creature, but there was also a pile of loose debris scattered on the ground in that gap. If I tried to leap it, in all likelihood I would catch my foot on the way up. Even if I was lucky enough not to break any bones coming down, I would never get up fast enough to avoid being tagged. They came closer, the nearest only six feet away now and I was in the corner. Two more steps, three, each of them moving in a sinuous manner that seemed to imitate each of the others with clocklike precision. Faced with my imminent demise, my own clock ticked in milliseconds, laying out each frame of movement in its own particular moment of exposition. Each lift of the leg, each thrust onto the other, even the drunken, wind-blown sway of their formless, mottled torsos, seemed to me in this temporal compression a kind of choreographed dance, and even though the individuals had all, individually, lapsed from total synchronicity, the effect was more like watching the same video feed on five separate monitors, each one on a slight time-delay. I have to admit, it was as fascinating as it was morbid, and why should I not admire this? What I was seeing was not just beyond the realm of my own personal experience but beyond that of any human being, ever. This was a display only I could appreciate, and I should appreciate it, because escape was impossible and death was inevitable, and though I was certain that I could choose more pleasant ways to shuffle off the mortal coil, I could at least hope that it was quick, or at least, that the insult to my nerves would be so dramatic that they would overload like fried circuits, leaving me to go away adrift on my own numbness.

That's when I stumbled. It had been something, a rock perhaps, or maybe a discarded soda can. I never got to see it, but I had stepped on it in my resign and retreat. The unexpected interloper broke my balance and I tumbled against the fence. I had expected the fence to catch me and then gently release me, but the section of fence I hit was not a part of the fence at all. It was a gate, unlocked and unlatched, and it yielded to my weight without the slightest refusal. Reflexively, I latched onto the gate's links and forced myself to balance once more. The nearest straight-jacket turned towards me by pivoting its entire body. No surprise was evident in this motion. It was the simple readjustment one would expect from a machine knocked slightly out of alignment. Behind it, its closest companion advanced in its new direction. Could they see, I wondered, or could they communicate? They were actually rather noisy when they were close enough, wet gurgles and thick, phlegmatic chokes with just a trace of nearly-human voice underneath. To me, they sounded just like random freakiness, but it could perhaps be some method of communication, primitive but apparently effective.

_Maybe you could ponder this after you close the gate?_

Good idea.

I rammed the gate shut and threw the U-shaped latch across a second before the nearest one got there. It bashed against the gate in bubbling frustration, and the latch jumped in its cradle, but it did hold. A filth-caked dumpster stood adjacent to the gate on my side, and I went over and pushed it in front of the gate. Two more straight-jackets were at the gate now, and both of them joined the first in slamming into it. With the added weight of the dumpster, the fence merely shrugged under the onslaught. I merely stood there, watching this crazy spectacle until the next one arrived. In a display that betokened at least animal cunning, this one did not throw itself against the unyielding gate. Instead, it bent backwards and fired a shot of its killer juice in my direction. It fell a full three feet short of where I stood, but I decided that the time had come to check this place out. I was safe—in relation to thirty seconds ago—but I'd rather not take even a small risk that they might find some way to breach the defenses.

A battered double-door led into the large structure which the gate protected. A faded placard hung askew next to it, reading **Woodside Apartments**. When I turned the knob, it gave, and opened into a cave. The agonized squeal of the badly-used hinges bounced around and back to me as I stepped into the lobby and let the door fall shut behind me. The sound of its latch was like that of some divine gavel in an immense courtroom which needed no call to silence.


	6. Chapter 6: Legs

**PART TWO – THE TENANT**

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**06: Legs**

It was as if I stepped into a world of complete contrast.

Well, that's not exactly true. The interior was only slightly less chilly than the exterior. Besides that, though? From day to night, almost literally. I didn't want to leave the front door open, not knowing how long the straight-jackets would pound away at the outer fence, but with it shut, I couldn't even see to walk around. Mist spilled in through the portal, whispering across the floor and disappearing into the darkness, like steam from a witch's cauldron.

It took me all of a minute to understand why the place was cordoned off. It wasn't for want of protecting some important secret, that was for sure. I knew that old buildings often built up an odor, especially old apartment buildings. My old man had been superintendent of a place called South Ashfield Heights since around 1970 or so. From the time I started school until Mary and I got a lease on our house, I didn't live anywhere else, and I spent God knows how many hours helping Dad in his various duties. The Heights had been built in the thirties, I think, and after fifty years, there were all kinds of scents once you got into the cracks and crannies of the place. Those were the scents of age, and thanks to my father's careful and diligent stewardship, it was graceful aging. Upon it carried the memories of the years, and I always liked getting into the ductwork or tinkering with one of the water heaters because those scents were what defined the place as my home. It was the spice of my life, you might say.

Here in the lobby of the Wood Side Apartments, I could smell the age, too. But, there was no grace to this aging. This was sour age. This was the aroma of an old place too dead to remember its inhabitants, a place where all hint of personality had long ago been devoured by mold and rot. It wasn't even a ghost. It was a cadaver. Where South Ashfield Heights was dowager, this place was merely geriatric. I wanted to get out of here as soon as possible, because I knew there could not possibly be anything here for me. Of course, this would have to be by way of some back door. This could actually prove to be a blessing in disguise. A back door might lead right around all these obstacles.

The gloom settled into my eyes, bit by bit, and gradual definition came along with that. I could only see outlines, but that was enough for me to grope my way along one of the walls to the one opposite of where I entered. My hand swept across the wall at waist level, gliding across a pitted, scabrous mess that I was glad I couldn't see, hoping that it would come across a doorknob. It did, but only after one such pass revealed to me a recess which turned out to be a short hall. There was a door at the end, but it was locked. I tapped it, and a reverberant metal clang told me all I needed to know about my chance of successfully forcing it open.

Facing the lobby, the silhouette of a stair railing stood out against the light of the open door. I gripped it, and its opposite number, for dear life as I took my first ginger step towards the second floor. The next wasn't quite so tentative, and after about six I felt fairly confident that the staircase wouldn't collapse under my weight. They circled the perimeter of the lobby and then around a suspended foyer, back around to the wall. There was better light up here, thanks to a broken window across and above. Most of them had apparently been boarded over, but some of the boards had fallen away. I could see the walls now, and they were covered in graffiti. Part of it was the dimness, but the brute force of age played a large part in rendering these messages unreadable. How long had this place been abandoned, that even the vandals no longer bothered plying their trade?

There was a door at the end of this curve, glinting like a badly-used tooth. Whatever its looks, it wasn't locked, and it revealed to me a hallway. It was in awful shape. Plaster, probably once the shade of eggshells, now looked like newspaper left in a sunny window. A series of deep fissures formed a crazy latticework which extended along the entire surface. The floor, once tiled with what looked like laminate, seemed to have, at some point, rejected those tiles as a body would reject an incompatible organ. They lay all about, some merely cracked, others shattered to the consistency of corn chips, none of them intact that I could see. The very fact that I _could_ see the tiles, or anything else, should have immediately announced itself as an unexpected development, but this only dawned on me when the whole image flickered. The image of the cracked walls and gouged floor blinked in and out with the speed and irregularity of an insect skittering across porcelain. When I looked up at the ceiling, I was almost stupefied. This building was deader than dead, hardly safe enough to explore, let alone inhabit. By all appearances, Silent Hill itself was merely in a less-advanced state of the same being. And, yet, the second floor of this crypt boasted a living fluorescent light. I'd already been given reason to believe in omens today, and hopefully, this was an example of the kind I could actually use.

I had a choice of direction, but naturally, I went to where the light was. This happened to be where the path branched. Neither announced themselves as obvious choices. Neither was even really desirable, as they both led away from the light, and I wanted to leave the light as much as I felt like tossing off my blanket on a February morning. I ended up going forward, the choice made entirely at random.

There were doors on either side, but I only tried the first two. One had a lock that had fused into a solid piece thanks to years of rust, and the second knob snapped off when I tried turning it. I couldn't picture any of them leading anywhere important, and at least half of them would never open anyway, being sealed with boards nailed across them at crazy angles. Then, I came upon one that I did try to open.

I was probably a dozen yards away from the light, far enough away that I couldn't even see this door. Yet, I knew it was there. A thin halo shone from on the floor, which had to mean that there was more electric light inside. I had to feel around for the knob, but once I did, it turned easily.

If the fluorescent back up the hall left me stupid, the light in this apartment almost left me dead. I could feel my heart lurch and then stop, like an engine throwing up its timing belt. The light itself had nothing to do with this. It simply lit the way to my halfway heart attack.

The clothes drew my attention immediately, and the draw was so intense that my perspective could not extend beyond them. This lasted only as long as that one heartbeat, but that was one minor eternity compressed into about a half-second of real time, in which I understood that my search was at an end. Doubt rushed in as soon as the thought formed, and outright dismissal followed right after, but in the span of that heartbeat, I was certain that it had all meant something after all. It didn't matter that this ruin meant absolutely nothing to either of us. It didn't matter that I was in this ruin only because circumstances forced me to come this way. All that mattered was that I opened this door, and behind this door was—

—headless. Armless. My heart, having apparently rediscovered its rhythm, now wished to exit by way of my throat. But, that too, passed. Christ, but it was like walking right into a memory. A memory, granted, which lacked some of the proper elements, but there was sledgehammer power in the remaining suggestion. White like the ghost I thought it was, the dismembered seamstress's doll held center stage in this small living room. It faced the wall, and its angle made it seem as though it knew I was there and understood why it shook me, but was determined not to show it.

It was the calamine sweater, the white dress with floral patterns. A wholly unremarkable outfit, save for the fact that if I could snap a Polaroid, I'd have a close reproduction of the photo I carried in my wallet—minus, of course, Mary Sunderland's arms and head. Mary's outfit came not from a department store, but from a fabric store, usually in cuts of cloth, occasionally in full bolts when she felt like experimenting. She had an expert's hand, as far as my untrained eye could tell, and it was her hands and machine, adjusting stitches and making measurements from memory, which produced at least three-quarters of her wardrobe.

That said, could this possibly be coincidence? Mary wasn't here, so intuition told me. I could give the place a search, but it would turn up nothing. And, though I still wanted to believe in coincidence, this whole town had, so far, presented one compelling counterargument after another. The dress-up doll offered no explanation for its outfit, and I thought it unlikely that anyone else would happen along, holding a guidebook filled with answers. The doll cared nothing for whether or not there was a purpose to its clothing. I supposed that I shouldn't, either, absent any clues.

I was happy to settle for the tangible rewards, however, and I clipped the flashlight in a vest pocket. Its plastic body was warm to the touch, and the lamp itself was hot. How long had it been left running? How long would it last? It didn't matter, really, because this flashlight and I were now friends for life—its rather than mine, I hoped. This apartment had a single wonderful quality which at least partially offset the fact that it had no others: I was alone here, and hopefully, it would remain that way. I would stay in this place not a minute longer than it would take to find the back door, but at least I might be able to count on a little bit of peace while I looked for it. So thinking, I turned around to leave.

And that's when I heard the radio.

I whirled around so fast that my eyes couldn't keep up with the light, and I needed to let them reacquaint. It had to be behind me, whatever it was.

At first, I had this crazy thought. I thought the dress dummy had come to life somehow, a crazy thought that was, on the whole, perfectly logical given the circumstances. I thought that it had been hiding in the guise of a dummy, a kind of predator's camouflage that let it lie in wait while its prey approached, never the wiser. The first flash of movement came from right behind it, but in that moment of disarray, I must have postponed my depth perception. Clarity of thought returned to me only when the perceived threat got knocked over by the real threat.

Focused as I was on the dummy, the monster appeared at first only as an outline against the darkness, but even that was enough to let me know that I was dealing with something different. For one thing, it had upper appendages. Arms, you might call them, but that was only because of their being upraised. But, no, not arms. I could see that now. No arms on the torso because there _was _no torso. It was as if someone took another set of mannequins, divided them neatly right at the navel, and fused them together somehow. The upside-down legs had been severed at the ankles, leaving behind stumps as black as wet ash. I should have been running even then, but I couldn't quite do it. I couldn't help being fascinated by the thing facing me. The funny thing was—while things could still be funny—the mannequin thing seemed to be just as curious about me. One of its arm-legs stood erect, as if testing the upper limits of its reach. The other flopped forward, as limp as a dog's ear. Neither of us moved. We had ourselves a showdown, although showdowns tended to be high-tension affairs with both participants praying they drew a split-second faster than his opposite number. I didn't sense a threat from this creature the way I had with the straight-jackets, but of course, those guys didn't hesitate. Once they caught sight—or whatever—of me, they were relentless.

So, I made another assumption. It wasn't human. Even the straight-jackets bore at least the suggestion of humanity, whatever they had now become. This guy here could not claim even that. And, even for all that, I made my assumption based upon its initial behavior. It wasn't until after it lay quivering in its death throes that its motive became clear to me.

Its erect leg-arm went back, and then shot forward as if driven by a piston. If my curiosity had been of the dumb, awed variety, I'd have gotten it right in the face, and it probably would have been game over right there and then. As it was, I had already seen too much crazy shit today to be caught entirely flat-footed. I lunged aside the instant I saw it cock its punch, and it missed me by more than a foot. A good thing for me, too. The walls in this place weren't probably in any decent state of repair, but I doubted I could put a fist through one of them without breaking bones. My attacker wasn't fazed by any such considerations. The stump hit the wall and kept right on going through the wizened plaster. A thicket of plaster dust exploded from the point of impact, reminding me of the lines drawn in comic books to illustrate motion and collision. That could have been my cue to make tracks. I had, after all, found a nifty little prize here already. I didn't need to die for want of greed, or even curiosity. Problem was, though I'd dodged the mannequin's attack, I dodged left when I should have dodged right. This was better than standing still and taking it through the chin, but now the monster blocked my path to the door.

The mannequin recovered quickly, yanking its more violent leg-arm out of the wall and retracting it to its old position. I'd noticed how the straight-jackets moved with a dancer's grace. The movements themselves were hardly poetic—they were, after all, not the most pleasant example of impossible anatomy—but there was such fluidity in the actual motion. They'd sway and thrash on their feet, sometimes going so far that you couldn't believe they were able to remain upright, but every move was so smooth so as to bring to mind precision-made machinery. Obviously, machinery couldn't bleed, and irrationality so completely defined their behavior that they couldn't be programmed to be the way they are, even by some accident.

The mannequin was like that, and more. Thoughts of machinery came easily to me again in this old apartment. It matched my every movement. When I tried to dart around its flank, it pivoted in near-synchronization, tracking me, following my movement as a magnet tied to a string would follow a piece of iron held just beyond its invisible grip. It lunged then, lashing out not to punch a hole through my face, but overhead like a club. I dropped back a step just quick enough to see that blackened stump fly by my face so close that it seemed to brush against the tip of my nose. Something caught me by the ankle, and for a horrified moment, I thought that it the mannequin had a partner, lurking unseen while I dealt with my attacker, waiting for a moment just like this to strike from the shadows and leave me prone. I went down, so fixated on the second attacker that I made no effort to break my fall. There was a loveseat behind me, and I landed on it the way a sugared-up kid might. Breath exploded from my lungs, but it was all surprise and no pain. Maybe later, I would take the time to be thankful for its presence, and the certain injuries it averted.

Brown and speckled like dirty road snow, the mannequin advanced. Both of its upper legs were held upright this time. A sheen coated them like wet plastic where the flashlight beam caught it full-on. In about three seconds, those things would come crashing down, perhaps both at the same time, perhaps not. Either way, if I was still on this loveseat when they finished their descent, they would turn my brains into hamburger. That was plenty to make me want to bolt immediately, but I held back one second, two seconds—

Both legs bent back to gain leverage, and then they came at me. I twisted aside and leapt to my feet, feeling the _whoosh_ as they cleaved empty air. This was followed by a sound like a deck of fresh playing cards being snapped off of someone's thumb, and I saw that one of the mannequin's stumps had torn a gash through the patterned fabric of the loveseat's back cushion. I swung my stick at that leg, its left. The exposed iron fangs at its business end had been pointed in the right direction by lucky accident; for sure I hadn't the presence of mind to make such an adjustment manually.

Considering what it had done both to the wall and to the loveseat, I had expected only to wound it, hoping that it would concern itself with itself long enough for me to get away. But when the nails bit into the joint which was either an elbow or a knee, it only slowed the force of the swing rather than stopping it cold. With a sound like cracking ice, the whole leg ripped free from the upper part of the torso. A gout of something, something which I thought had to be blood but was as black as india ink, sprayed from both severed ends and left spidery marks on the seat cushion. I'd seen nothing like a mouth on the creature, but it must have had one somewhere, because it let loose with a sound unlike any I'd ever heard from a living creature, yet the note of pain was unmistakable for all that. I yanked the stick away with a groan I could barely hear over the creature's cries. I thought I'd already emptied out my stomach this morning, but it hit the spin cycle anyway. It seemed to want to crawl out and run away to where it wouldn't be subjected to so much abuse in so short a time.

I kept it down though. I had to, because even though the mannequin convulsed and cried, it seemed to also be trying to stand. This could have just as easily been my own fear and paranoia at work, but I poised to strike anyway. Ignoring paranoid ideas wasn't a luxury I could afford anymore. As it turned out, that's precisely what it was. It quaked now, as if beset by the world's most wicked bout of epilepsy, erasing all semblance of motor control. It went on and on, at one point beating a visible dent into the floor. I thought that if I stood here any longer, watching it, listening to it beat its death tattoo against the sofa and floor with the accompanying mad treble provided by the radio, I would go mad. Then, the quakes became quivers, then trembles, and finally, it slumped against the floor. Its remaining upper leg bent reverse against the lip of the seat.

I had the shakes, myself. The adrenaline bled out of me, and with it, my muscles felt ill-used and a hair's trigger away from going slack. I closed my eyes and tried to calm myself with a deep breath, but all that did was fill my lungs with awful, wet decay, the reek of meat discovered in the back of the refrigerator after about eight months in hiding. Get out of here, yeah. That's what I had to do. Get out of this apartment. Get out of this whole building, and ten seconds from now wouldn't be soon enough for me.

On the way out, I noticed that it was indeed another mannequin which took me out at the ankle a moment before. I rolled it over so that its limbless bulk lie flat on its back, and I stared at it for a long time. The photo was in my wallet. It would be no trouble at all to pull it out and compare the here and now to the captured memory. But, why bother confirming what I already knew to be true? All that would do is distract my thoughts, and I could think of nothing I needed less than something to draw away my focus. I stepped over it and left the apartment, priding myself on my self-control even as I wished I could pluck the image from my mind and leave it in the darkness with the real article.


End file.
